Last week I was walking vineyards above the Alexander Valley near Geyserville, where they’ve received an overabundance of rain this winter, with a customer. As much of the vineyard remained saturated, our conversation turned to what happens to nutrients that have been...
News
Shoot Growth and Anthesis in Vitis
Shoot Growth and Anthesis in Vitis by Charlotte Pratt and B.G. Coombe vitas-vea In the majority of shoots on a grapevine the number of internodes is fairly constant at anthesis. The number of visible internodes was higher in Vitis vinifera L. (16-19) then in V....
Critical Role of Crop Biostimulants
I attended the Bio Controls Conference in Reno, Nevada last week. I found much of the content presented at the conference to be extremely interesting, especially the latest information on agricultural biostimulants. Agricultural biostimulants include diverse...
Poor Fruit Set – FAQ
Dear Friends of Andaman Ag, The last two of our newsletters have addressed problems and solutions associated with poor fruit set. I've received several questions and inquiries from growers and I've reached out to growers that are using our products to get their direct...
Improved Set / Reduced Shatter – #2
With bud break around the corner or occurring in some places already, we can look forward to bloom and set shortly thereafter. It’s a couple week period that every grower dreads, hoping for fair weather and little wind as without a good set, the remaining year becomes...
Addressing Rain Soaked Soils
We all know that an adequate and balanced supply of all mineral nutrients is critical for optimum fruit set. I think this year is going to be especially challenging given the amount of rain that we’ve experienced and the amount of mineral flush and heavy leaching of...
New 2015-16 CDFA Agricultural Statistics
Every year California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) produces their yearly report which is always interesting although the amount of information can be overwhelming. Lots of food for thought to ponder with no pun intended: The sales value generated by...
Plant Immune Systems
I'm frequently talking about how technologies greatest impact on agriculture could be in new measurements. New research has uncovered a previously unknown means by which plants are able to regulate how their immune systems respond to pathogens. "A group of small...
New findings on how plants manage immune response
New research, being published January 20 in the journal Science, has uncovered a previously unknown means by which plants are able to regulate how their immune systems respond to pathogens. A group of small peptides, referred to as RALFs (Rapid ALkalinization...
Chitin is a promising soil amendment for improving soil quality, plant growth, and plant resilience.
In the current study, we demonstrated that the chitin soil amendment strategy which was previously known to be effective against plant pathogens (e.g., Dutta and Isaac, 1979; Hallmann et al., 1999; Cretoiu et al., 2013) also is able to control Salmonella on leafy...